On this day in 1691, the Italian painter Giovanni Paolo Panini was born. He is known for his view painting: very large scale painting of cities. In his case, it was Rome. It’s interesting stuff, but I would prefer more people. He clearly had a gift for historical or mythical material, but he did very little of it.

Igor Stravinsky was born on this day in 1882. He is arguably the most important composer of the 20th century. Most of the last century was a muddle with the majority of the best composers really coming from the 19th century. But Stravinsky seemed to understand the opportunities that the liberalizing environment provided in the context of where music was going. It is hard to listen to his music without thinking that in a strange way it was defining the course of music. As interesting and important as Arnold Schoenberg was, almost no one writes like him anymore and few want to hear his work. He was probably as brilliant as Stravinsky but he used his gifts in a far less edifying way. And I say that as a fan of Schoenberg. It is just that Stravinsky was the 20th century.

Here is Stravinsky at age 82 conducting the New Philharmonia Orchestra in the “Lullaby and Final Hymm” from The Firebird:

On this day in 1898, M. C. Escher was born. Everyone knows Escher and his prints of impossible reality. He worked mostly with lithographs and woodcuts, which alone makes him pretty interesting. But it is his ideas that made him world famous. I think it is a mistake to think of him in that way, however. He was much more. For example, Gravitation on the right has all of those elements but is also extremely compelling with the turtles using the polyhedron as a shared cell. If Escher hadn’t been so against politics, I would claim it was a socialist statement.

Actor Ralph Bellamy was born in 1904. And two-time World Chess Champion Tigran Petrosian was born in 1929. He was known for his amazing defensive play. He was kind of the yin to Bobby Fischer’s hyper-aggressive offensive yang.

Japan’s “eternal virgin” Setsuko Hara is 92 today. Social realist director Ken Loach is 77. Newt Gingrich and Barry Manilow are both 70 today. Jello Biafra is 55. Here he is with Dead Kennedys doing one of my favorite songs, “California Uber Alles.” You’ve got to love a guy who (rightly) thinks that Jerry Brown is too conservative. Calling him a fascist is a bit hyperbolic, but that’s why it’s so fun:

The younger Farrelly Brother, Bobby is 55. And Greg Kinnear is 50.

The day, however, belongs to Ruth Graves Wakefield who was born on this day in 1905. Who could beat out Stravinsky and Escher and Biafra? Who is more important than all of these remarkable men? Why, only the inventor of the chocolate chip cookie! Wakefield worked as a dietitian and a food lecturer when she was young before starting a tourist lodge, Toll House Inn. She invented the cookies when she used chunks from a semi-sweet chocolate bar for her chocolate cookies, because she was out of baker’s chocolate. She sold the recipe to Nestle’s in exchange for a lifetime’s supply of chocolate.

Happy birthday Ruth Graves Wakefield!

Greg Sargent wrote an article this afternoon that really has me scratching my head, Do Senate Dems Have the Votes for the ‘Nuclear Option’? The word on Capital Hill is that the Democrats may not have enough votes to enact the “nuclear option”—the move to abolish the filibuster on judicial nominations. Apparently, there are four Senators who are not keen on this filibuster reform: Carl Levin (MI), Patrick Leahy (VT), Jack Reed (RI), and Mark Pryor (AR). As a result of Frank Lautenberg’s death, this puts the number of Democratic votes for the “nuclear option” down to just 50—not enough to pass.

These four Senators are an odd collection. The first three are somewhat liberal from liberal states. I can understand someone being very much in favor of minority rights and really wanting to keep the filibuster. But when the Republicans last controlled the White House and the Senate, they effectively eliminated the filibuster. This was at a time when the Democrats were using the filibuster half as much as the Republicans are now. Plus, the rate was decreasing. Can these guys really think that they are preserving the filibuster and not just, you know, preserving the filibuster for as long as it advantages the Republicans? Really: I don’t get it.

The fourth Senator, Mark Pryor leans somewhat conservative, and given that he’s from Arkansas, I can hardly blame him. But even he’s an odd one to be against this. During the Bush years, he was part of the Gang of 14, who effectively ended the Democrats’ ability to filibuster. I know, I know: the Gang of 14 compromise was supposedly a way to maintain the filibuster. But in practice it just meant that the filibuster remained as long as the minority didn’t use it. And when the Republicans were once again in the minority—Quelle surprise!—the Gang of 14 broke up. So it would seem that Pryor is very concerned about protecting the minority, but only when his own party is in the majority. Of course, Pryor is known to be kind of an idiot:

What I find perplexing in Sargent’s article is his concern that the Democrats don’t have the votes for the “nuclear option.” First, it is not at all clear that none of these four will vote for it. He wrote that Leahy and Pryor are “question marks” and Reed is “a Maybe.” (I’m not sure why he capitalized it.) And then there is the Joe Biden factor. Sargent showed that Biden is virtually guaranteed to be on board, so there are the 51 votes that the Senate needs.

I would add one more thing: the Democrats could wait until October when Cory Booker (or regardless, some Democrat) wins the special election and puts a Democrat back in the Lautenberg seat. So I think that Sargent is just being overly gloomy. I usually share that gloom, but it looks pretty sunny this time. And I’m especially happy that my two Senators Boxer and Feinstein are on board. Let’s reform that filibuster!

One of the big arguments against libertarianism is the threat of monopolies. If there is no government, what will stop all markets from becoming noncompetitive? What stops a big company from using its resources to sell below cost for long enough to drive the competition out of business? The answer to these questions is hardcore. If one company gains a monopoly and doesn’t keep prices down, another company will see an opportunity and enter the market. This is a perfect libertarian answer because it is (1) perfect in theory and (2) hopeless in practice.

The way this situation would work in the real world is that most businesses would not enter the market because they would know that the current monopoly would simply force them out of the market by selling below cost. The only business that would enter the market would be another behemoth that was only entering the market to destroy the current monopoly and take over the place themselves. Doing anything else would have too high an opportunity cost.

One particularly interesting aspect of this situation is that it would cause prices to be highly variable. Today, the price of sugar might be 50 cents per pound but next week it might be $5.00 per pound. Libertarians are generally very concerned about price stability. As you can see here, government bonds are not the only thing that affects price stability. What’s more, libertarians are fond of pointing out that inflation is a kind of tax. And that’s true—a tax with many advantages. But monopolies are their own kind of a tax—but a tax that does no good.

I bring this up, because the Supreme Court just found in favor of free markets in FTC v. Actavis. In a 5-3 decision, the Court found that the FTC could sue drug companies for paying other companies to not produce generics. This brings up our entire broken patent system, but this particular case has to do with the time after the patent is over. Suppose Company A just lost its patent on a drug. Company B is going to start producing the drug at a much cheaper price. So Company A pays Company B to not produce it. According to libertarian thinking, there is nothing wrong with that. And three justices agreed: John Roberts, Clarence Thomas, and Antonin Scalia. Samuel Alito recused himself, but he certainly would have voted with them.

This is all funny when you look at it the right way. The libertarian argument here is that two companies ought to be able to enter into their own contracts and it has nothing to do with the rest of us. In fact, there are other companies that could start to make the drug, right? As I’ve indicated, this is nonsense. But what’s funny is that the very same libertarians who would argue that the government shouldn’t get involved in the market in this way think that the government should get into the market in a very big way by allowing patent monopolies.[1]

The idea for allowing patent monopolies was always to encourage innovation. But at least when it comes to new drugs, the government spends as much as the drug companies do on research. What the drug companies spend a lot of money on is advertising. They spend almost 20 times as much on marketing as they do on research. Clearly, we would be doing better if we got rid of patent protection and provided more public funding of research. It would also have the advantage of providing better drugs and not just the newest boner pill that’s only advantage is that it is still covered by a patent.

The problem with libertarians or communists or anyone who is dedicated to an ideology is that they limit their options in solving real world problems. To libertarians, patents aren’t about creating a dynamic marketplace; they are about some theoretical notion of freedom. But the truth is that freedom is not an absolute concept. There is the freedom of companies to subvert market forces so they can keep drug price margins high; and there is the freedom of individuals to buy drugs at a free market price. The fact that we have patents at all indicates that we understand this freedom trade off. But libertarians and like minded conservatives seem to think that the only freedom that is in need of expansion is the freedom for businesses to increase their profits. Thankfully, in this case, five members of the Court came down on the side of individual freedom—the kind that is increasingly fragile in this country.

[1] There are some libertarians who don’t believe in patents. They are rare, however.

I’ve got a great way to make a group of people think that the government is complete corrupt and without any accountability. It’s really easy. Have the people on TV tell them every day about some terrible scandal. Of course, there is no actual scandal. The news readers just report things that indicate that there is a scandal and don’t report the vast majority of the evidence that indicates there is nothing going on. And then, when all the possible scandal confirming information has been reported, the TV drops the subject altogether.

This is brilliant because the news source never actually lied. It provided true, if highly misleading information. But the biggest part of this is not information at all; it is the sudden lack of reporting. Why would they do that?! It must be yet another example of the government clamping down on the news media. We really do have a fascist government! It won’t even let them talk about these scandals on TV!

Yesterday, The Hill reported, House Republicans See Long Slog Ahead for Probes of IRS Targeting. It got me thinking about the effects that all of these non-scandals are having on conservative television viewers. For almost a year, they’ve been told that Benghazi is a big scandal: Obama killed those four people! And now? Nothing other than occasional comments to the effect that Benghazi is a bad scandal that shows how terrible the administration is, even if there is no evidence to support that.

What’s interesting about the article in The Hill is that the Republicans themselves seem to be aware that they are doing this. Actually, it’s been pretty clear for a while. Why else would Darrell Issa be selectively and deceptively releasing information from the House hearings? But it goes further than that:

In other words, “We are only going to put out information that furthers our goals of embarrassing the White House.” It also makes it sound as if the Republicans on the committee want to slow the process down so that they can use this non-scandal (You do know it is a non-scandal, right?) throughout next year’s election cycle to impugn the Democratic Party.

As much as any group, conservatives bemoan the fact that the people have no respect or confidence in the major institutions of American life (except shockingly, the military). Yet they are willing to hurt our country on this score in the name of short term political gain. There is no doubt that Charles Boustany and Darrell Issa know there is no scandal behind the IRS targeting of Tea Party groups. But they will use their plausible narrative and willing accomplices in the conservative media to imply that it is true. It’s shameful. It’s traitorous.

The great French painter Nicolas Poussin was born on this day in 1594. His work is both Classical and Baroque. He paints mostly historical or mythical scenes. It’s all very crowded and intense and beautiful. The great German musical theorist Georg Joseph Vogler was born in 1749. Arranger and “difficult” composer Robert Russell Bennett was born in 1894. What do I mean by “difficult”? I mean that even I have trouble appreciating his work. Psychologist Erik “Identity Crisis” Erikson was born in 1902. Thomas the Tank Engine creator Reverend W. Awdry was born in 1911. Virologist Thomas Huckle Weller was born in 1915. And Waylon Jennings was born in 1937.

Harry Nilsson was born in 1941. He was one of the greatest popular singers and songwriters of all time. Everyone knows his music but most people haven’t heard of him. Two of his better known songs are “Without You” and the novelty single “Coconut.” But he didn’t write his best known song, Fred Neil’s “Everybody’s Talkin’.” There’s no doubt, however, that Nilsson’s performance is what makes the song. He manages to make the song simultaneously perky and dark. “Skipping over the ocean like a stone,” for example, does not come off as carefree. Here is his version:

The great actor Simon Callow is 64 today. As much as I love him as an actor, I now think of him more as an Orson Welles biographer. Many people take offense at his biographies, but all he’s done is to remove the many layers from myth of Welles’ life. Welles was a gifted actor with one of the greatest voices ever. He was also a director of unsurpassed skill and unparalleled creativity. I disagree with Callow in his belief that Welles was fundamentally an experimentalist who didn’t really care about finishing films. I also think he is a tad critical of Welles’ life. But I do think he cuts to the core of Welles’ genius and appreciates him in ways that many of his fans do not.

James Belushi is 59. Julie Hagerty is 58. And the second Saavik, Robin Curtis is 57.

The day, however, belongs to the great Norwegian composer Edvard Grieg who was born on this day in 1843. Although he was a Romantic composer and I’m not all that fond of the period, he transcends it. Here is his very playful piece, “In the Hall of the Mountain King” from Peer Gynt, which I’m sure you know:

Happy birthday Edvard Grieg!

On this day in 1726, the father of modern geology, James Hutton was born. He proposed the idea that the surface of the earth was slowed formed by processes such as erosion and sedimentation. I never think of geology as an especially theoretical subject. This undoubtedly is based not on any great understanding of the subject but the fact that when I was in school, the geology students were all so fit and tanned and always going on geology camping trips. I extrapolated based upon that. But Hutton figure out how the earth works primarily based upon theory. In addition to his many accomplishments, he is the first person to propose what came to be known as the Gaia Hypothosis.

Opera composer Antonio Sacchini was born in 1730. Here is a bit from his opera L’isola d’amore. Have you noticed how opera singers (female and male) have gotten, well, very attractive? Or more simply: sexy. This woman could use a couple of pounds, but she has really great legs. And she can sing. I’m not too fond of the choreography, but the rest is impressive:

Uncle Tom creator Harriet Beecher Stowe was born in 1811. Publisher and original author of Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations, John Bartlett was born in 1820. I have a 1944 edition of the book always close by. It is extremely well organized. But I have to say: it doesn’t usually have the quotations that I’m looking for. It really is necessary to have a more up to date copy since sayings go in and out of vogue.

Burl Ives, who I know as the snowman in Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer was born in 1909. Gene Barry of The War of the Worlds fame was born in 1919. And novelist Jerzy Kosinski was born in 1933.

Two real fucktards are having birthdays today: Donald Trump is 67 and Pamela Geller is 55. And Boy George is 52. I don’t have many thoughts either way about Boy George, but for some reason, I read his autobiography.

The day however, belongs to the great musician Junior Walker who was born on this day back in 1931. I’ve really loved his music over the years. I’m sure you’ve heard this classic:

Happy birthday Junior Walker! You are sorely missed.

Speaking of enfant terrible, Josh Barro’s counterpart on the left is Matt Yglesias. (It says much about our screwed up political system that these guys largely agree on policy matters.) Today, Yglesias wrote an apologia of sorts for the contention of the European Union elite that Ireland is some kind of economic success story. It isn’t that Yglesias himself thinks that Ireland is a success but he is putting forward a defense of how these people can possibly think that Ireland, with a 13.5% unemployment rate, is a “success.”

Basically, the argument comes down to this: “Ireland is doing a lot better than Spain!” I have a word for that argument: pathetic. But Yglesias pushed it. He rightly noted that since 2011, Irish unemployment has gone down a tad whereas Spain has seen its unemployment rate go up by 5 percentage points. But this is where he went wrong, I think. He blamed the rise in unemployment on the Spaniards’ “many iterations of protest marches, strikes, and even riots.” In contrast, the Irish, although they too hate austerity, have been “good soldiers.” This is absurd! First, he presented no argument at all to indicate that the strikes are the reason for the increased unemployment. Nor is it at all clear that the Irish would not also riot if their unemployment rate were to double.

Yglesias even implicitly makes this argument. He showed that Iceland’s economy is doing even better than Ireland. Whereas Ireland only saw its unemployment rate go down starting in 2012, Iceland’s has been steadily decreasing since mid-2010. There are a number of reasons for this, in particular the fact that Iceland has its own currency and that they let banks fail rather than propping them up like they were “supposed” to do. And yes, he’s right that Spain and Ireland are both in a bad situation because they don’t have their own currencies. But he’s dead wrong to suggest that the difference between austerity being marginally successful and being a total catastrophe is how well behaved the populace is.

It’s this kind of very theoretical, too smart by half writing that is most annoying about Yglesias and Barro. They both seem far too caught up in their own clever notions about policy to care about the actual human lives that are harmed. In Yglesias’ article, he blames the Spanish workers whose lives have been destroyed for the fact that austerity continues not to work. This strikes me as typical of war apologia (although far more understandable). It is shocking, but there are many who claim that getting rid of Saddam Hussein was well worth the at least 100,000 Iraqi deaths. Regardless of how much one may have wanted to get rid of Hussein, that is too high a price to pay. The best I can say is that such people have become disconnected from their fellow humans. And I’m afraid that is especially easy when looking at something as theoretical as economics.

Afterword

I admire both Yglesias and Barro. I wish I didn’t have to say that. Most of the time I write about them, it is to present an interesting idea or perspective. But that doesn’t stop me from being annoyed with them. What makes them great is also what makes them annoying. The late 20s and easy 30s are a hard time for intellectuals. I understand. That was when I was a bleeding heart libertarian. And I have long admitted that part of my dislike of Barro is that he reminds me of myself at that age, even if he is smarter. (And that is a question; until anyone beats me at a differential equation solving competition, I concede nothing!)

I can see why Republicans increasingly don’t see enfant terrible Josh Barro as a conservative. He will go on! Yesterday at Business Insider, he wrote, There Is Still No Conservative, Pro-Middle Class Agenda. It is primarily an attack on Utah Senator Mike Lee, but Barro is quite clear that he means it to be a more broad attack on the Republican party and even the conservative movement itself. He wrote, “But as is typical for Republicans, the key focus of legislation Lee supports isn’t reform—it’s cutting spending on entitlements in order to make space in the budget for tax cuts.” Although I completely agree, I know the counter argument, “But those tax cuts will spur the economy and all the poor will have good paying jobs!” There seems to be no amount of evidence and argument that can convince conservatives that this isn’t so.

This all raises a question in my mind. It is a personal question ever since Barro called me dumb for writing that he is a conservative apologist. The question is this: why is Barro a conservative? Liberals and Democrats want efficient infrastructure spending. It was the Democratic Party that changed “welfare as we know it.” And it was Democrats who enacted a “free market” reform of healthcare. Why is it that Barro wants to reform the Republican Party when it looks to me like what he really thinks it ought to become is the modern Democratic Party? (I’m all for that, by the way; the problem with the Republican Party is that the Democratic Party has moved much too far to the right.)

For the record, I don’t believe that Barro understood my article because he completely mischaracterized it. I wasn’t saying that he was wrong for wanting infrastructure projects to be efficient. I said he was being a Republican apologist for using reasonable arguments to justify others’ ideological decisions. I did and still do expect more from Barro, who I may disagree with but still think is brilliant.

Last week, Dean Baker wrote an article for the Huffington Post in which he discussed Elizabeth Warren’s proposal for making student loans more affordable. He said at first he didn’t like the plan because it wasn’t transparent and would certainly lead to the money being used in unintended ways like rich kids taking out loans to invest in the stock market. But then he realized something important, “Somehow sound economics are only important in discussions of policies that are intended to help the poor or middle class.”

Think about this with regards to infrastructure projects. Any actual project is going to have waste or at least things that some people will call waste. As a commentator, one can either argue for the project or against the project. But the argument cannot be simply that there is a lot of waste. Is the waste a reasonable trade off for the good? What’s more, when someone like Josh Barro argues that a transit project is too expensive or isn’t needed quite yet, he isn’t making the case for a more efficient or later project. As a practical matter, his arguments will be used to kill such projects.

Since Barro’s thinking is far more in line with the Democratic Party than the Republican Party, I don’t see why he doesn’t come on over. And I’m not sure that even he knows. One thing he doesn’t seem to appreciate is the great favor that much of his writing does for those pushing policies he disagrees with.

Many will be surprised, but those who read me closely will know that I have a certain fondness for Rick Santorum. Yes, his conservative Catholicism is ridiculous. And generally his policy positions are terrible. But his economic rhetoric is quite compelling. He has a strong populist streak in him—and it is real, not like the pretend populism of so much of the conservative movement. As I recall, his grandfather was a coal miner, and regardless, he comes from the working class and values it.

Yesterday, Santorum spoke at the Faith & Freedom Coalition conference. And he attacked the Romney campaign’s use of the “you didn’t build that” meme. He said that it was wrong to put only business owner up on the stage at the Republican National Convention to counter it. “One after another, they talked about the business they had built. But not a single—not a single—factory worker went out there. Not a single janitor, waitress or person who worked in that company! We didn’t care about them. You know what? They built that company too! And we should have had them on that stage.” Damn right!

There are a couple of problems, however. First, of course, is that the “you didn’t build that” meme was always trumped up nonsense. Obama was talking about the public infrastructure that makes business possible. It was a mistake to try to make the comment into something that it was not. The public never accepted the narrative that Obama was against business for one very simple reason: Obama is not against business. In fact, he is arguably the most pro-business president we’ve ever had.

The other problem is that Santorum is being charmingly naive if he really believes that the conservative movement has any room in it for labor. As I’ve written about with regard to libertarians, conservatives simply idolize the Businessman. They see the worker at best as a kind of necessarily evil. Sometimes their rhetoric tries to appeal to labor. But after Reagan, I think that labor has learned its lesson.

Santorum, unlike Reagan, I think actually does value labor. I think he is fundamentally a decent guy who is looking for ways to contextualize his conservative ideology so that he isn’t a horrible person. And he is quite correct to try to introduce the importance of labor into the conservative narrative—hopeless though I think that effort is. Because regardless of the conservative love for the Romantic notion of the Job Creator—symbolized by the half-dimensional John Galt—labor is far more important to business success than capital. Labor can exist without capital; and without a large group of buyers there would be no point to capital investment. So Santorum should be applauded for his rhetorical efforts on the part of labor. There are a lot of Democrats I know who could learn a thing or two from him.